Damsel in Distress
by Lilac Summers
Summary: The Doctor is coming to the rescue...although nothing is really turning out as planned.


Title: Damsel in Distress  
Author: Lilac Summers  
Characters/Paring: Ten/Donna

A/N: From a tumblr plot prompt: medieval. Fluff, really. Just fluff, very little plot.

* * *

"Doctor," he hears over the phone, Wilf's voice tremulous and strained. He sounds, the Doctor thinks in shock, _old_.

"Wilf. What is it? What's wrong? Is it Donna?" he replies, phone pressed tight to his ear. _Please don't let it be Donna!_

"Yes," Wilf answers, and the Doctor's stomach plummets to his feet. "I don't really know what happened. The big silver lights started appearing—"

"Time Worms," the Doctor explains hurriedly, immediately thinking to his last adventure on Earth. He starts flipping levers and buttons on the console, now that he has a relative point of reference. "Random holes in time due to instability in the time matrix. I fixed it, though!"

"I got Syl and Donna into the house fast enough, but there was this silver sparkle, almost seemed to be following Donna," continues Wilf, voice strengthening as the TARDIS flies through the vortex.

"No no no, that's not possible. Time worms aren't sentient, they're just _things_ like clouds or cheese or a ball of yarn. They don't follow people," the Doctor argues, though the thought niggles in the Doctor's mind that Donna seems to make the impossible possible. He hangs up on Wilf without a goodbye, as the TARDIS has landed and he's already making his way to the doors. He opens them to Wilf's relieved face, phone still dangling from his fingers.

"Doctor, do you think…do you think whatever's happened, wherever she is, will make her remember?" Wilf finally voices the question that has been lurking, unsaid, through the whole conversation.

"Show me exactly where Donna was standing when the wormhole sucked her in," the Doctor instructs, face grim.

* * *

Donna wakes to the view of a canopy draped in royal purple silk. She blink blink blinks at it for a while, wondering just exactly how much she had to drink and who the hell she might have picked up at the pub who had a bed with a canopy, for chrissakes.

She frowns at the purple silk some more, until she realizes that she's actually surrounded in it — the sheets she lays on are of the same weave and color. Silk sheets! Fancy that. A bit of a rough weave, but still, silk. Very posh. Very nice. She's starting to approve, even if the bloke she ended up with likes beds that look like somethin' out of a 5-year-old girl's dream bedroom.

She sits up, rubbing her head. For once, however, the ever-present headache is absent. S'funny, she doesn't actually remember going to the pub; but her memory's not exactly in top top shape lately, so who's she to argue. In fact, last thing she recalls was her Gramps trying to rush her inside, then silver sparkles appeared and ... She squints, really making an effort to remember. There are memories pushing at the edges of her mind, welcomed and pain-free, and she wants so badly to let them in...

With a shake of her head, she pushes the heavy drapes around the bed aside.

She blink blink blinks some more. She's in a tower of some sort, stone, circular. And there's a window across the way. And a humongous eye is blink blink blinking right back at her.

"HOLY SHIII—-"

* * *

The Doctor lands in a giant puddle of mud. More precisely, the TARDIS lands in a giant puddle of mud and so, when he opens the door, he also, in fact, lands in that puddle. He grimaces and slogs through to find that the puddle is really a pothole on a worn, soggy dirt road in the midst of a 10th century village. It reeks of the refuse and sewage that flows freely down narrow gutters; the Doctor sidesteps expertly as the contents of a chamber pot are hurled out a window.

He pulls his sonic out, checking the bright blue beacon that indicates Donna is nearby. It pulses steadily. The Doctor wants to feel relieved but he doesn't have the luxury, not until he finds her — safe and sound and whole and p_lease don't let her have remembered!_ He plods along, focused solely on the blue light of his sonic. Flashing faster and faster as he makes his way through the town, past the square, the church. thatched homes, up and up and uphill…and he's kind of running out of town, here, unless she's in the—

He looks up, frowning. Yep, a castle.

Donna Noble is in the castle, because even when she's sucked through a time wormhole, she isn't going to settle for the simple things in life.

It isn't until he's closer to the castle that he realizes that the townsfolk, who had largely ignored him, have finally started to pay attention. Whispers break out when he approaches the portcullis guarding a narrow bridge that leads to the castle proper.

Two men in dented armor flank the portcullis, staring at him as he saunters forward.

"Yes, hello there. Can I get through please?"

The folk round him murmur excitedly at his request.

The guard on the left looks at him with an appraising eye. "We haven't had a contender in weeks! Thought everyone finally gave up. The last one returned in tears."

"Uhh…"

"Mind, you're not gonna get very far with that getup," adds the other.

Agreement rings up from the audience behind him. He notices, belatedly, that the townsfolk are closing in around him, steely purpose in their eyes.

-.

Forty-five minutes later, the Doctor heaves himself the last few steps to the gate leading to the castle's main courtyard. He's alone, the villagers having left him as soon as he passed under the portcullis. Of course, not until after they had attired him to their satisfaction.

Thus sees the Doctor pushing open the massive wooden doors with an ill-fitting gauntlet.

There don't seem to be any guards near this door, or any people at all. The Doctor enters the courtyard, the rusty armor he was forced into wearing banging and clinking and squeaking like a collection of old pans and poorly-oiled hinges.

He sets his shield and sword down, huffing. Why had the townsfolk insisted he have a sword and shield? But he abandons the question with little more thought, intent on digging into a gap in his armor. He's certain he put the sonic in there, and he needs it to better triangulate Donna's location. Suddenly, however, a large shadow covers him.

He looks up just in time to see a giant lizard with huge wings descending upon him, talons spread and maw open. Flames lick the back of the beast's throat.

The Doctor yelps and snatches up the sword and shield just in time to deflect a claw the size of his forearm. It's pure luck that the sword is angled so it scrapes the beast's leg as it swoops past. The monster rears in pain, tail lashing like a whip, narrowly missing decapitating the Doctor. He drops down as low as his too-large armor will allow, and takes another swipe with his sword.

"Oi!"

The beast recoils its great head, smoke rising from wide nostrils. A few experimental balls of flame hurl towards the Doctor, and he bats them aside with his shield as he resumes digging for his sonic. He grabs it, tunes it one-handed, and points it at the beast. A piercing noise erupts from the screwdriver, and the beast retaliates by spreading its great wings, raising on its hind legs, and roaring with enough force to rattle the Doctor's armor.

"I SAID, **Oiiiiiiiiiii**!"

The shriek overpowers the sonic, carries over the animal's roar, and has both combatants falling silent as they turn to stare at the source of the sound.

Which is none other than Donna Noble, entering the courtyard. She's regal in a sapphire-blue brocade gown that sweeps to the floor in heavy layers, her red hair bound back with pearls,

"D-Donna!" exclaims the Doctor, shield falling noisily from his nerveless fingers, and too caught up in her appearance to care about leaving his back exposed to the mutated flying lizard. She's here! And alive…_and so beautiful and he missed her so much…_

"What the hell do you think you're doing to poor Ferdinand!" she screeches at him, ire rouging her cheeks.

"I -" belatedly he realizes that her seeing him could trigger her memories. He hurries to slap down the visor of his helmet, shielding his face. "I'm here to, er, rescue you?"

"And who in flippin' blazes asked you to do that?! You interrupted our tea time! Well, not tea time, since tea isn't a thing here yet - but our mulled wine time!" she demands.

"Uh, I kind of assumed…" he swivels to look at the slavering behemoth. He swears the monster looks smug. "Wait, you named the giant mutated lizard 'Ferdinand'?"

"How many times do I have to tell those backwards morons in town that I don't need to be rescued, and I'm not letting you kill my dragon!"

This rescue really isn't going at all how the Doctor imagined. "No, that's not right. It's a mutated lizard. No such thing as dragons," he corrects her, because suddenly being right about this seems very important in the face of all the uncertainty.

Donna flicks imaginary lint off one of her voluminous sleeves. "There seems to be a bus-sized dragon right in front of you that would prove otherwise. Why don't you tell Freddy she's not real, right to her face?" Donna plods over to stand protectively in front of the not-dragon, who seems content to smile toothily at the Doctor over Donna's shoulder.

"You named a female mutant-lizard Freddy?" Now he's really confused.

Donna looks insulted. "What, was I supposed to know whether it's a boy dragon or girl dragon just by looking? Can you tell boy and girl dragons apart? Because you didn't even _know_ they existed!" She eyes him for a moment, from his battered borrowed greaves to his listing helmet. "That _is_ you under all that crap, right, Doctor?"

The Doctor feels both hearts skip a beat. His brain freezes, recalculates, runs a thousand different scenarios and none of them end with her so casually asking if he's the Doctor. He carefully, hopefully, lowers the helmet from his head. "Donna? You recognize me?"

She smiles at him once his head is clear from the helmet. "Of course I do, you goof. Caught a look at you before you put that tin can on your head. And who else is gonna go around sonicking a dragon and arguing with me about it when one is breathing fire right in your face," she points out.

He stares at her some more before reason kicks in, and then he's hurriedly undoing buckles and straps and laces, leaving pieces of armor behind as though shedding skin, each layer taking him one step closer to Donna. Finally, free, he reaches her and sweeps her into a tight hug. "Donna, oh, you, my marvelous Donna. How?"

He leans back and frames her beloved face in his hands. "Do you hurt anywhere? Are you burning?"

"If I were burning, it'd be because I asked Freddy here to set you aflame, and couldn't get out of the way fast enough," she responds with a smirk. "And don't think you wouldn't deserve it! Now get off, I'm fine."

"But, how?!"

Donna disengages from his hold so she can turn and pat Freddy's snout. "Turns out they're psychic, dragons are. When the sparkly time thingies appeared, Freddy sensed me through time and sent a psychic call to pull me through. She needed protection from the townsfolk. Stupid men kept trying to 'kill the beast' and she couldn't leave the castle 'cos her eggs are here. So she brought me along to keep her family safe; I've been sending everyone packing right quick!" She beams at her dragon, and Freddy shows huge serrated teeth in an answering grin. "But even better, the trip through the wormhole drained that last bit of Time Lord nonsense; fixed my head, too." She knocks playfully on her own temple, "All good in here! Then I figured I'd just cool my heels until you got here. You're running about two months late, by the way."

He has a million questions but no words, so he only sweeps her up in his arms again. Freddy makes a sort of harrumphing sound behind them, and the're wreathed in a cloud of fragrant smoke.

When he finally releases her, Donna snags his arm and begins dragging him to the castle. "Let me show you my bedroom. I want you to make the TARDIS redecorate my old one so it matches. Good canopied beds aren't appreciated enough. Oh, and, by the way, we're taking Freddy with us."

"What?! No we are not!"

"Of course we are. And her eggs. We're taking her eggs with us, too," adds Donna decisively as she begins the climb to her tower.

"ABSOLUTELY not; I'm not taking a drag—" balks the Doctor.

"Oh, and we wait for Helena to come back from hunting, and he comes along," Donna interrupts, looping her arm through the Doctor's.

"Helena?! Who's Helena?"

"Ferdinand's boyfriend."

"You named a male dragon Helena?" queries the Doctor, incredulous.

"You're way too set on gender-normative names, Doctor," Donna scolds, primly. "Also, I didn't realize which was what until I saw them having…er…bam-chicka-bow-wow dragon time. Then it kind of became clear. But by then the names had stuck!"

The Doctor forces them to a halt. "Donna, I can't just take a dragon family on board the TARDIS. Think of the cleanup! I'd have to widen the doors just to—"

Donna silences him with a warm finger over his lips. "Through all of time and space, it was _me_ that got pulled through, because fate or the universe or whatever knew that you'd come find me." Her eyes are soft and kind, and the Doctor wonders if his feelings are so very transparent that even the universe knows that the surest way to him is through Donna.

"They're the last, you know?" she continues quietly. "'Least, I'm pretty sure they are. We can make sure they have their babies safely, keep them going, and so maybe they won't be the last anymore."

She grins once more, that Donna Noble spark he missed so much lighting her eyes. "And that's why you think dragons don't exist!" she laughs in delighted realization. "Because you ended up stealing the last pair and keeping them in the TARDIS!"

And of course he's going to say yes to her; after a few hours he finds himself herding Ferdinand and Helena into the new habitat built by the TARDIS, Donna and he carrying each egg in carefully after them.

And later, after they've assured Wilf that everything's fine, and have made sure Donna's room meets her new specifications, he sits next to her on new grass and watches Donna's dragon family soar over artificial skies.

She's still wearing her blue gown, the sunset reflecting over her braided hair. It seems like a dream, but when he finally gathers the courage to lean over and kiss her, she tastes of fine mulled wine, and so very, very real.

* * *

_fin_


End file.
